


A Rare and Unknown Pleasure

by jottingprosaist (jane_potter)



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, College of Winterhold - Freeform, F/M, Khajiit - Freeform, M/M, Multi, Other, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sex-repulsed Ace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 06:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5324018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_potter/pseuds/jottingprosaist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(or: 5 Things J’zargo Taught the Dragonborn + Interlude + 1 Thing J’zargo Learned)</p><p>At first, Karrod is merely an interesting and helpful peer. Then he is a companion, a kindred spirit, a constant presence. It is <i>good</i>, this relationship— not friendship, not courtship, yet good all the same. But J'zargo does not know how to explain when other people begin demanding answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Rare and Unknown Pleasure

  **1\. Restoration**

 

The new student was… interesting. J’zargo didn’t think much of him when he arrived: the last thing the College needed was another sword-swinger like Onmund, and this Redguard arrived carrying not one but  _two_  swords and a mace. But he enrolled with the Master Wizard as an Enchanting specialist, so he was no competition to J’zargo in the School of Destruction, and he didn’t go about swinging his weapons in the courtyard very often. He was cheerful and flattering in conversation, which made him well-liked, so that only J’zargo seemed to notice he never actually answered questions about his scars or his weapons or his life before the College. And he was tall, dark, and handsome, yes— but not more handsome than J’zargo. All in all, interesting, yet also very tolerable.

Best of all, Karrod was so  _helpful_.

J’zargo’s success and charm had made him somewhat unpopular with the other apprentices. It made things awkward on the rare occasion when he needed help with a tricky project. Karrod, though— Karrod was only too happy to test J’zargo’s experimental scrolls.

Three days later, he came back singed, burned, and deeply  _un_ happy.

“They nearly exploded  _me_ ,” he said, thrusting the remaining nine scrolls at J’zargo. “Was that the intended effect?”

“Ah,” J’zargo said, momentarily flat-footed at such failure. All that work, ink, and parchment, wasted. “No, that was not supposed to happen. But… J'zargo is pleased to see that you are here, and not in pieces!”

“At least  _you’re_  pleased,” Karrod muttered.

“The damage is not so bad,” J’zargo consoled, because the last thing he needed was for  _another_  student to start complaining about him. As impressive as J’zargo usually was, he was as vulnerable to nasty rumours as any Khajiit: too many whispers could drown out a roar. “If Khajiit had used the scrolls, he would have no fur. But you are already bald! A little Restoration will fix the rest.”

“I haven’t studied Restoration,” said Karrod, scowling. “Don’t rub it in.”

“Well…” Karrod was turning to go. “This one can teach you, then!”

So: there was a tall, dark, and handsome man on J’zargo’s bed, shirtless, letting J’zargo touch his chest. Not the way this usually happened, true, but a change sometimes made things more interesting.

Heal Other was an Adept level spell, one of J’zargo’s many impressive accomplishments considering that he didn’t specialize in Restoration. That it was well above Karrod’s non-existent abilities didn’t stop J’zargo from explaining as he went along, methodically repairing burns from the worst blisters on Karrod’s face and hands to the lesser ones where his plate armour had heated or his leathers had been partly charred away.

“Can I…?”

“Not everyone is as talented as J’zargo. Perhaps an easier version.”

Healing was so basic that most people knew it and spoke of it as if there was no other “healing” spell. Karrod somehow didn’t know it— perhaps Redguards shunned magic like the Nords? J’zargo didn’t know— but he picked it up quickly enough. Even after he’d managed to produce a steady glow and flow of energy, he didn’t say a word about J’zargo continuing to press his hands over Karrod’s and guide them across the injuries.

“You see? J’zargo fixes his mistakes when he makes them… which is almost never. Still, you were not meant to be hurt.” J’zargo gave him a sly sideways look and lowered his voice. “You may stay if you like. J’zargo has wine. It was meant for when exams come, but it will do as an apology.”

Karrod slipped off the bed, smiling obliviously as he reached for his singed shirt. “No need! The tutoring session was enough, and it’s late. I think Urag is lecturing tomorrow morning, and it’s mandatory, so I’ll see you there.”

Well, that was a disappointment. But it didn’t stop Karrod from being interesting.

 

* * *

 

**2\. Homebrewing**

 

J’zargo was surprised to find that even after Karrod had accepted his apology and evidently moved on with his friendly disposition no worse for the wear, J’zargo continued to feel bad about the incident. Perhaps it was that he remembered the blisters on Karrod’s hands, some of them filling with pus and others already popped when Karrod had fought his way out of the Midden. There was a reason J’zargo didn’t specialize in Restoration, and it wasn’t just because there was no glory in becoming a healer: it was that wounds didn’t sit well with him or his stomach. He preferred to deal damage and then walk away triumphantly.

So— without mentioning his guilty conscience, of course— J’zargo extended an invitation for Karrod to participate in one of the College’s long-standing traditions.

“What, is he in the group now?” asked Brelyna. The apprentices all slept together in the Hall of Attainment, but they had formed separate social groups of age and ability. Karrod had arrived at the College quite a while after J’zargo, Brelyna, and Onmund had fallen into familiar rivalry.

“I vote yes,” said Onmund. “Come to think of it, I like him better than you, J’zargo.”

To that J’zargo smiled with his teeth and resolved that Onmund would have difficulty finding many of his possessions in the next week.

“I got your note,” Karrod said, peeking through the door onto the roof of the Arcaneum the next afternoon. “You said there was a… party?”

J’zargo, of course, was alone on the roof. “The party is not for a while yet, I am afraid. First we must prepare for it! Come, come. You will need time to learn this, I think.”

Karrod tugged his cloak more tightly around himself and walked over, peering with interest at the flasks, sacks, and tins of ingredients J’zargo had assembled in a swept-clear part of the roof. “Alchemy?”

“Even better, my friend. Alcohol.”

It was a simple enough matter when it came down to it. Brewing mead or ale normally took a long time, but with a few carefully tailored Alteration and Destruction spells, a half-decent mage could shorten the process to just a few days— or a few hours, if she wanted to go blind. Although they’d looked, the apprentices hadn’t yet found a spell designed to transform water or any other liquid directly into alcohol, and Urag had been decidedly unhelpful. It was a project for future days, perhaps. For now, the process took a few steps.

“First you must select your base,” J’zargo said, sweeping a hand over the ingredients. “We have Jazbay grapes, juniper berries, apples… a little wrinkly, but they will do. Wickwheat if you want to attempt that sujamma the dark elves like so much. And honey, of course, but Onmund always makes mead— not excellent, but acceptable enough— and it is best not to compete directly if you want a chance at winning.”

“This is a competition?” Karrod rolled his eyes. “Wait, what am I saying. Everything is a competition with you.”

“Everything is a competition,” J’zargo corrected him. “But this time, we all compete. Onmund and Brelyna are brewing as we speak! You have much to catch up on if you want to join in, hm?”

Karrod stared at the arrayed ingredients. Then he sat down cross-legged beside J’zargo and pulled a number of potatoes from a sack. “I’m in,” he announced.

It was cold on the roof, but Karrod was enjoyable company, and J’zargo appreciated the opportunity to needle some of his cheerful, evasive non-answers without interruption by less clever people. Still he got little information, but that was all right. For now. When Karrod’s potatoes and J’zargo’s more complicated mix of apples and unripe snowberries had been reduced to mash in their flasks and mixed with water, J’zargo had to stop conversing to teach Karrod the Alteration spell that would transform parts of the fruit into alcohol.

“Couldn’t we just do this by heating it and leaving it alone?” Karrod asked, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“That is for those unskilled in the magical arts. Why would mages wait for this? Of course, you may if you like.”

Karrod smiled like Khajiit often did: all teeth and only  _seeming_  friendliness. J’zargo liked this.

Cloaks tucked tightly around them, they passed a productive several hours working at the project, though Karrod had to dump several flasks of ruined potato slop— sometimes no longer resembling potatoes— over the side of the Arcaneum. He seemed unbothered by his failures, however, even when J’zargo mocked him about it. Much better than Brelyna’s sensitivity to failure or Onmund’s temper over teasing.

Then J’zargo’s sharp ears heard something over the whistle of the wind: footsteps on the stairs.

“ _Vessad_ ,” he hissed, and corked his flask hastily. “Come, quickly!”

He grabbed Karrod by the hand and hauled him over to the door, leaving their ingredients and flasks abandoned on the roof. Ignoring Karrod’s confusion, J’zargo ushered him through the door just in time to come face to face with Master Wizard Ervine at the top of the stairs.

“I thought I heard voices up here,” she said, frowning at them suspiciously. “What are you two doing?”

“Ah. Well,” J’zargo said quickly, before Karrod could answer. He hastily straightened his robe— already perfectly in order— and combed his claws though his cheek fur. “We were… discussing a matter of some privacy.”

Ervine took his gestures for what they were meant to be: a distraction, and a suggestion that J’zargo and Karrod had been doing something that required robes and hair to be fixed. She huffed through her nose, equally annoyed and amused. “Well, the evening lecture starts right away. You’ll want to hurry to your lecture halls.  _Separate_ halls, if I recall correctly.”

J’zargo didn’t let his embarrassed smile fall until Ervine had vanished down the stairs. Then he turned to grin at Karrod.

Karrod, to his surprise, looked deeply uncomfortable. “This is against the rules, isn’t it,” he said flatly.

“Rules are not for telling you what to do,” J’zargo said. “They are for teaching you how to get away with breaking them. This is an  _old_  tradition. All the old ones did this when they were students here. They know we do it now— we just have to not get caught.”

Still, Karrod wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“You want to back out of the competition, perhaps?” J’zargo suggested, not letting it show that he was disappointed. “Very well, J’zargo accepts this. It will be easier for him to win this way.”

“I’m still in,” Karrod said, more sharply than he’d ever said anything before. “I just…”

He didn’t finish his sentence, instead heading back out onto the roof to stow away the brewing assembly until they next had time to work. Bemused, J’zargo went to help.

 

* * *

 

**3\. Drinking Games**

 

After Karrod had mastered the necessary spells to his satisfaction— an easier task than learning Restoration, since he already had some background in Alteration and Destruction— he took his flask and went off to work on it elsewhere. Once J’zargo ducked down into the Midden to work for a few hours and discovered Karrod already sitting over an alembic, distilling his project. J’zargo expected from Karrod’s earlier behaviour that he might not be welcome, but to his surprise the Redguard waved him over with a grin.

So, despite the fact that they didn’t always work together, it seemed Karrod hadn’t been driven off by… whatever. J’zargo’s insinuation that they were lovers, maybe. Some people were threatened that Khajiit were the cleverest and most handsome people, and the best lovers as well. J’zargo preferred not to know if this very tolerable and interesting man was one of them.

Four days later was the party. After the last lecture and the evening meal, J’zargo slipped into the kitchens to acquire sweetrolls— and, while he was there, half a bottle of cream left over from some earlier day. Then he met Karrod loitering obtrusively in the main foyer. Together, they slipped down the passage to the smaller lecture halls, which was darkened now that the day’s classes were over.

“J’zargo looks forward to tasting what you have made. Hopefully it will not make him blind.”

Karrod laughed. “Does that usually happen?”

“Only once, very many years ago. Before J’zargo’s time. But this is why students are not permitted to make alcohol any more. Sad that we must pay for the mistakes of less talented mages.”

The last lecture halls in the corridor was small and cramped, meant for courses on specialized magics that had few disciples. Still, they offered a few tiers of stone benches and desks for seating, which was better than the Hall of Elements, and perfect for a small gathering.

Onmund and Brelyna were already there when J’zargo pushed open the door. A Candlelight on the front pillar illuminated the room in blue-white, and Muffle runes shone on the threshold.

“Did anybody see you?” demanded Brelyna.

“Not a soul,” Karrod assured her, winking. “Now, I hear there’s booze to be had?”

At the bottom of the hall, Onmund whooped and held up two bottles sealed with wax.

Laughing eagerly, they all threw furs over the cold stone benches and produced their various goods. Onmund, anticipating victory, had prepared a full ten bottles of mead and had smuggled some cured sausage and cheese out of the kitchen. Brelyna had a single bottle of cider— typical, and a very safe choice— but provided a sack full of hazelnuts as well. J’zargo produced three bottles of lovely pink wine and his sweetrolls. Karrod put down a single bottle of something that looked very much like water, but also, although J’zargo had not told him to, contributed a paper package of taffy and a sack of what smelled like horker jerky.

“I’ll go first,” said Onmund, only for Brelyna to say, “No, I think I will.”

“So eager to lose,” J’zargo drawled, and did not grin when they angrily demanded he go first, then.

“Not bad,” Brelyna said grudgingly, though she had finished her entire cup of wine already.

“Too sweet,” Onmund complained.

“Is there moon sugar in this?” asked Karrod, examining his cup with slightly unfocused eyes.

“Of course,” J’zargo laughed.

Onumnd had made some slight improvements to his usual mead, but it was too familiar to tongues already halfway sick of Nordic drink, J’zargo thought. To Brelyna’s dismay, her cider gave off a terrible stink of rotting the moment she broke the seal. Only Karrod was kind enough to try a sip, just so that Brelyna could compete. His reaction just made J’zargo and Onmund howl louder.

For his turn, Karrod produced four very small red glasses, each scarcely as tall as J’zargo’s thumb. J’zargo rolled his between his fingers, intrigued. It took gold to create red glass, and that meant these were expensive despite their diminutive size.

“Is it water?” asked Onmund as Karrod passed him a glass, then choked on the fumes when he stuck his nose into it.

“You have to drink it all at once,” Karrod said.

“Like greef,” said Brelyna, sniffing her drink more carefully. “ _Oh_. That’s… that’s not greef.”

“On three. One, two…”

They threw the tiny drinks back. J’zargo’s mouth was immediately hot-cold, awash with sensation. It burned down his throat and into his stomach. Afterwards, he opened his mouth to gasp for breath and tasted a lingering spiciness, a blooming bouquet of flavours that had been hidden beneath the initial burn.

“That’s  _strong_ ,” said Onmund, blinking watery but appreciative eyes.

“You already knew how to brew this,” J’zargo accused.

Karrod grinned. “I didn’t know the Alteration. Just the alchemy. Healers distill plenty of alcohol for cleaning wounds, you know.”

J’zargo cursed him in Ta’agra with reluctant admiration.

Maybe it was beginner’s luck, or perhaps just a way of making him feel welcome to the group, but Brelyna and Onmund voted for Karrod’s akvavit, as he called it. Karrod voted for J’zargo’s apple wine— “I’ve got a sweet tooth,” he confessed— and J’zargo voted for himself, of course. So it was a tie.

“You can’t vote for yourself,” Onmund complained. “You always do that. It ruins the whole competition.”

J’zargo pinned his ears and considered as he was grumbled at. Well, Karrod had voted for him as well, so he had at least one mark in his favour. That was tolerable. “Very well. J’zargo votes for Karrod.”

J’zargo smirked and Brelyna clapped sarcastically as Onmund bestowed upon Karrod a crown of braided straw, which Karrod accepted with solemn dignity. And then it was to the most important part of the night: drinking all the leftovers.

“You have never heard of drinking games?” asked J’zargo, as they cleared space on the long stone desk for dice.

“Where I’m from, most people just drink to forget,” Karrod said.

J’zargo filed away that tidbit of information but didn’t press for more. “All drinking should be for fun. J’zargo will show you. Fill your cup.”

Lying Sailor was easy enough to catch on to, and obviously J’zargo’s favourite. They made the akvavit disappear.

Then it was Spinner, while they were still sober enough to handle the knife safely. Karrod and Onmund were unfairly good at this.

Sloshing wine over her cup’s rim, Brelyna insisted on Cheydinhal Viper, which involved staring into one another’s eyes. By that point in the evening, they had drunk enough for this to appeal.

“One, two, three!” Brelyna counted, and J’zargo opened his eyes to see… nobody looking at him.

“Viper!” Brelyna shouted at Onmund, whom she had made eye contact with. “You drink.”

“One, two, three!”

Karrod’s eyes were so dark that even from two feet away, they did not show colour. No Khajiit had eyes like these.

“Viper!” he said, and J’zargo realized he had lost.

Shrugging, J’zargo took a swallow of his own wine and smiled. “Delicious.”

Did he imagine, then, the number of times that he opened his eyes to find himself looking at Karrod? Onmund looked at J’zargo often also, but that was to make him drink more. Did Karrod pay so much attention to the others, or no? J’zargo could not always glance over fast enough to see.

Eventually, the wine was gone too. Brelyna was lying on a desk on a higher tier and nibbling a string of taffy, her head lolling to watch them. Onmund clumsily swept the desk clear of hazelnut shells and dice, and slapped down his knife again with a challenging glint in his eyes.

“You ever played Five Finger Foyadas?” he asked, and J’zargo was smart enough to let Karrod play alone.

 

* * *

 

**4\. Astronomy**

 

Once the apple wine was gone, J’zargo had to make do with Onmund’s mead to wet his tongue. The problem was that alcohol without moon sugar made him… listless. Tired. He could not maintain Brelyna’s sloppy affection or Onmund’s deafening boisterousness, nor cope with them. In these moments it always occurred to him that it was a bad idea to drink with friends, but he never seemed to keep to his weary resolutions not to drink again. Every time, though… J’zargo always wished he had.

Unable to be near the loud, laughing trio, J’zargo snatched a bottle of mead and quietly wandered down to the front of the lecture hall, where a short stone pillar held up the Candlelight. They didn’t seem to note his absence. Just as well.

Beside the lecturer’s podium there was a locked cabinet. It took a few minutes of scraping to pop the lock, which was embarrassing and frustrating, but at least the difficulty went unnoticed. Inside the cabinet, as J’zargo had known, were an assortment of perforated copper boxes and domes and and numerous crates of glass plates.

“Light’s gone!” Onmund shouted when J’zargo dropped a box onto the pillar over the Candlelight. “Zargo…”

“Here, here, here,” Karrod started saying, and conjured a flickering Magelight. The group erupted in giggles again and returned to ignoring J’zargo. Something fascinating was happening with Onmund’s cheese.

The box was only four sided, with the bottom open so that it could enclose the Candlelight and one side open so that glass plates could be slotted into grooves. The first random plate J’zargo inserted turned out to be a Restoration diagram. When illuminated from behind by the light, the smeary red and black ink on the glass was projected onto the lecture hall’s front wall as a detailed illustration of the human arm, split open to its muscle and veins.

“Now that is unsettling,” J’zargo murmured, and took a drink of his mead. Nonetheless, he stared at the illustration until it started to make him queasy, then replaced it with another.

More dissected human anatomy— this time, an arm made solely of what looked like tentacles, which J’zargo determined after some squinting were nerves. Then a skeletal arm. A hand, sadly human or mer and lacking Khajiit’s excellent claws. J’zargo put the slides back in their crates out of order, amused by the little trickery.

After some digging, he found a section of plates on Khajiit anatomy. “What is this?” he complained to nobody. “Is obviously Cathay-raht, not Cathay.” He scratched the offending label off the plate. “And this— is Ohmes-raht foot on Cathay leg. Where is the dewclaw?”

Somebody had mis-filed an Illusion plate in a Restoration crate. More intrigued by the mind-bending Illusion illustrations, J’zargo helpfully completed the task of rearranging all the plates in order of interest rather than School. One particularly egregious plate that described a prettily painted Alfiq sister as “little more than a housecat” was slipped beneath the cabinet covered in clawmarks rather than back inside of it.

At last he tired of dragging crates around and standing up to switch plates. He shoved the crates back in the cabinet and removed the projector box, which promptly blinded him. Cursing in Ta’agra, J’zargo ignored the chorus of yelping from his classmates, who were at the top of the room evidently competing to see who could walk the farthest across the back of a bench.

He slid a familiar copper dome over the light, dimming the lecture hall once more. Light escaped the dome in thousands of pinpricks. J’zargo weaved his way over to a corner and slouched down against the wall, tired and contented to stare up at the myriad constellations projected across the dark room as the last of the moon sugar haze fizzed through his brain.

Some time later J’zargo spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. Karrod slid down the wall next to him.

Too weary to greet, J’zargo grunted. Karrod replied, “Hmm,” sounding similarly tired. Then, surprisingly, he slid all the way down and laid his head in J’zargo’s lap to stare up at the ceiling. Pulled out of his exhausted malaise by the surprise, J’zargo hesitated a moment before laying his hand on Karrod’s chest. When he began to stroke back and forth, as he would to a Khajiit friend, Karrod responded with a pleased sigh.

“No more knife games?” J’zargo asked after a while.

“Onmund and Brelyna were both flirting with me,” Karrod murmured. His black eyes roamed over the ceiling. “I hate it when people do that. I wish they wouldn’t.”

J’zargo’s hand went still. But Karrod had said nothing about it, so he did not remove his hand. When he began to delicately scratch Karrod’s exposed collarbone with the tip of one claw, Karrod hummed.

“Are these the Skyrim stars?” Karrod asked.

“Yes. J’zargo had to learn a whole new sky when he came north from Cyrodiil.”

“They’re nothing like the ones at home,” slurred Karrod. “I don’t recognize any of them.”

This was unsettling in more than one way. J’zargo knew that other peoples did not understand the stars as Khajiit did, but to not even be able to find the Cat-Who-Points-South was dangerous to a traveller, as he inferred Karrod had been before coming to the College.

“Look there,” J’zargo said, pointing with his free hand. “You see this brightest and most beautiful star? This is Al-Maisan, the Queen’s Eye. And then if you follow it south… you see the little diamond?”

“The little ones all together?”

“Yes. This is the Queen’s Hand with all her lovely gold rings. She points due south, telling Khajiit the way home to warm sands.”

“Which Queen?”

“Hm?”

“Which Queen is that?”

Pleased to have his wisdom recognized, J’zargo told him the story of Mara Mother Cat and her nine foolish taken-in-children, only one of whom heeded her instructions on how to come home after venturing away from the forest. But in the absence of the oldest eight children, the home forest was found and taken over by the naked imp Torfal, so when the youngest child returned there was nowhere for her to live. The Queen Mother took pity on Ma’tesset and pointed her to a new home in the south, where only clever and strong Khajiit could live.

Karrod asked many questions about this. Poor man: he was as foolish as all humans, not knowing even the simple truths of the sky. Perhaps inspired by Mara, J’zargo took pity and told more stories. The lights of the stars danced in Karrod’s so-black eyes.

Eventually, a loud rasping sound interrupted him. J’zargo looked down from the ceiling to see Onmund snoring on top of a desk in the middle of the hall. Brelyna was playing dice by herself nearby, chin propped on her hand.

“This one warned Onmund,” J’zargo groaned. “This one said if he fell asleep drunk again, J’zargo would paint him like Khajiit so that he could at least  _look_  attractive while he is whining and groaning the next day.”

Karrod lifted his head from J’zargo’s lap despite J’zargo’s disappointed hiss. “It’s late. We should take them to bed.”

“’M tired,” Brelyna agreed faintly.

Karrod managed to wake Onmund and took responsibility for hefting the Nord over his shoulders when it became apparent that he couldn’t— or wouldn’t— walk. J’zargo and Brelyna cleaned away the remains of their festivities and stumbled down the darkened halls after Karrod, trying not to let shoulder bags of empty bottles clink.

Outside it was long past midnight and bitterly cold. J’zargo had to hold Karrod’s elbow to steady him as he broke trail through freshly fallen snow in the courtyard. Then he had to put a hand over Brelyna’s face to muffle her giggles as they slipped into the Hall of Attainment. They would face more angry punishment for waking their peers up than for wandering around the College drunk in the middle of the night, since there was technically no rule against  _drinking_.

“Sleep,” J’zargo muttered, pressing a pillow over Brelyna’s face. It was embarrassing, but his brain wasn’t forming full sentences in Imperial although he had lived most of a decade in Cyrodiil before coming north. “Shh. Close the mouth.”

“G’night,” she mumbled, and rolled over.

J’zargo was swaying intently toward his own room when he heard Karrod whispering, “Stop. Stop it. Onmund,  _shit_. Go back to sleep.”

Karrod was leaning over Onmund’s bed, apparently trapped in the process of removing the Nord’s boots. Onmund had wrapped both arms and a leg around him and was mumbling sleepily in his ear despite the way Karrod had twisted his face away.

J’zargo delivered a judicious prick of his claws to one of Onmund’s wrists. Karrod pulled back the instant Onmund recoiled.

“Is easy,” J’zargo told Karrod, putting a pillow over Onmund’s face. The resulting yell was muffled. “Leave the boots. Just like this.”

Onmund went quiet when he realized that J’zargo wouldn’t let up until he stopped squalling. J’zargo patted the pillow once and took Karrod’s hand to tug him out of the room, leaving Onmund to struggle with his robes and boots and blankets.

Exhausted, J’zargo flopped down on his bed and curled up in a tight ball beneath the furs. To his surprise, Karrod crawled in behind him after a moment, fussing a little with the pillows before he fell asleep back to back with J’zargo.

Again, he had a tall, dark, and handsome man in his bed. But J’zargo did not want to embarrass himself by trying to do anything about it right now. Not like stupid Onmund. Khajiit rarely waited to delay pleasure, but now J’zargo thought it most wise. Sleep was clearly the better option.

 

* * *

 

 

 **5\. Grooming** ~~  
~~

 

J’zargo woke with a splitting headache and a mouth dry as parchment. He fumbled on the bedside table but there was no water pitcher to be found. And when he rolled over to reach for the other side— instead, there was Karrod.

“You are in my bed,” J’zargo rasped, blank-minded.

“You’re in  _my_  bed,” Karrod corrected without opening his eyes. His face was smushed into a drool-stained pillow. “This is my room. You just walked in here with me last night and got in.”

All J’zargo could do was give a pained groan and put his head down again.

“There’s lecture in an hour,” Karrod mumbled. “Heard the bell.”

“Sheggorath take lecture.”

But a few minutes later Karrod hauled himself up. “Don’t look,” he said, which made J’zargo’s slow brain realize that the man was changing clothes. He kept his aching eyes closed.

“You look terrible,” Karrod said. “C’mon, I brought you new robes.”

“Brush,” J’zargo croaked. “My fur…”

Karrod padded out of his room and back in, apparently having slipped into J’zargo’s room. Had he noticed, then, that Khajiit did not take offence to having their belongings rifled by friends and even strangers? Or did he simply feel comfortable going through J’zargo’s things?

“Uh. Do you want me to…”

J’zargo cracked an eye to see Karrod’s hand hovering over his face, brush ready. The pounding in his head decided him. “ _Gently_.”

Gently, gently, Karrod stroked the boar-bristle brush across J’zargo’s cheeks, smoothing the sleep-skewed fur back into something like order. J’zargo tilted his chin up to let Karrod get under his jaw and neck. Then it was his forehead and the stubborn forelock that took coaxing to fall flat.

No use. His stomach was rebelling. J’zargo rolled away from Karrod abruptly, feeling about on the floor for— “Bucket.  _Bucket—_ ”

He found the empty chamber pot just in time. When he had finished retching, he dragged his head and shoulders back onto the bed and lay there in miserable exhaustion. Why was he not  _alone_ in his room?

Cold water on his neck made J’zargo squirm in surprise. Then the sensation resolved as a wet cloth Karrod was pressing to the back of his neck.

“This is not supposed to happen,” J’zargo mumbled into the pillow.

“That’s all right. Come on, you can still make it to lecture.”

J’zargo groaned loudly.

“Your hair’s a mess. Should I keep going?”

“…Ugh. Yes.”

J’zargo had fallen asleep in his hood, and his hair was in matted tangles beneath. Karrod tugged the brush through them from the bottom, working up until it ran smoothly.

Face down on the pillow, J’zargo bit his lip in embarrassed annoyance. He still felt far too woozy and weak to handle getting ready for the day on his own, but now that he felt slightly more awake, he was also irritated to have given a human permission to touch his fur. They  _all_  wanted to do that. J’zargo was not a  _cat_. He did not want to know that Karrod was one of these people.

Poisonously, J’zargo drawled, “This one is very soft, no?”

“I’m not  _petting_  you,” Karrod said, too sharply. “I mean… I’m not. Look, if you want me to stop—”

Something about his protest made J’zargo relent. “Go on.”

After a moment, Karrod lifted J’zargo’s hair and removed the cloth from the back of his neck to brush down the wet ridge of fur there. The firm strokes of the brush made J’zargo feel achingly how long it had been since somebody had brushed his back properly.

“I’m not petting you,” Karrod said again, more quietly. “When I first came to Skyrim, I had long hair. Braids. But I left the… people I came with, and then there was nobody around who knew how to help braid my hair properly, and it got bad. Very bad. So I cut them off. Then when it grew out again, people just kept asking if they could  _touch_  it. Sometimes they didn’t even ask. And maybe it’s not quite the same for you, but…”

“This one understands,” J’zargo interrupted. “It is as if they see an animal that walks and talks.” He rolled onto his back and squinted up at Karrod. The dark gleam of his scalp was starting to disappear under a soft, fuzzy shadow. “May J’zargo feel yours? Not to pet.”

Karrod bent his head down. J’zargo touched just long enough to confirm his suspicions and took his hand back.

“Ah, yes. J’zargo has cousins with this hair. It takes many hours to braid.” And then, not quite knowing what desire motivated the offer, he said, “If you grow it again, J’zargo can twist it for you.”

Karrod blinked at him in astonishment for long moments before a grin began to stretch his face. Had he been Khajiit, his tail would have been curling. “Would you?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

It was not quite the offer he ought to make to seduce Karrod, nor to charm him for a favour. And J’zargo was not at the College to make friends: certainly he would do no such labour for Brelyna or Onmund.

At the back of his mind, J’zargo remembered Karrod saying, “ _I hate it when people do that. I wish they wouldn’t_.” He knew better than to pursue someone who had turned away all possible advances. So what was this thing?

Well, Karrod remained interesting, and it was pleasant. As clever as J’zargo was when it came to magic, nobody ever said Khajiit were supposed to think too hard about their pleasures.

 

* * *

 

**Interlude:**

 

J’zargo dragged himself through the hangover, consoled only by the fact that Onmund did not appear until third lecture, and even then he lurched out halfway through to retch in the hall. After evening meal, Karrod appeared in J’zargo’s doorway with his brush, which had been left that morning in Karrod’s room. Looking a little uncomfortable, he tossed it over and turned to go.

“Can you…” Karrod paused two steps out of the door. “Can you possibly help J’zargo?” Not looking Karrod in the eye, J’zargo gestured over his shoulder. “This one’s back has not been brushed properly in too long. There is nobody here who understands.”

The ridge of thick, dense almost-mane down J’zargo’s spine gave up clumps of hair that made even Karrod raise his eyebrows. When it was done, though, J’zargo craned a mirror over his shoulder to admire the way his ridge gleamed sleekly.

“Khajiit thanks you,” he said formally.

Karrod grinned. “You’ll return the favour.”

So it went on.

Karrod ceased shaving his hair, though he kept his face cleanly trimmed. When his dark curls were long enough, J’zargo bargained and badgered and charmed Enthir down to a reasonable price for a jar of hair balm, the kind Ra’zhinda of Ri’saad’s caravan used. It was the work of an evening to twist Karrod’s hair into tiny coils, each one scarcely the size of a cherry pit. Meanwhile Karrod read from his notes and argued with J’zargo over Master Tolfdir’s ereyesterday lecture on the undead. J’zargo saw Brelyna peek through the doorway once, but she said nothing and moved on with her book when J’zargo glowered.

After that unwise celebration, the four of them did not drink quite so much, though they still competed over homebrews twice more that semester. Most evenings that involved drinking were started when Karrod and Onmund got into the ale in Onmund’s room, and J’zargo and Brelyna and some of the other students were dragged in by the noise. Alcohol without moon sugar turned out to be far more tolerable when all J’zargo had to do was lie on a rug with his head on Karrod’s stomach and listen to the conversation, which was kept down to a reasonable volume by the proximity of the older students on the second floor.

Exams approached and Karrod began to spend more evenings in J’zargo’s room than Onmund’s. Halfway through he semester, he had applied for a second specialization in Restoration, and now he had twice as many exams to train and study for.

This new specialization was was convenient, given that J’zargo’s focus on Destruction left him constantly nursing a dozen injuries from shock, fire, and frost. Karrod was only too eager to heal these away, especially when he discovered  that J’zargo’s forearms were flecked with many small scars and patches where his fur would no longer grow back. J’zargo tried not to leverage this for sympathy… much. Karrod was so generous with care that J’zargo hardly needed to try.

After exams in early First Seed, Karrod emerged with his journeyman’s emblem in Enchanting, having advanced from apprentice to adept, and a seal that proclaimed him an apprentice of the School of Restoration. J’zargo earned a journeyman’s emblem of his own for Destruction— and, since Onmund seemed likely to make journeyman in Conjuration and Brelyna had finally declared a double specialization in Illusion and Alteration, J’zargo charmed Master Wizard Ervine into letting him take the Restoration apprentice exams at the last moment.

“I don’t see the point,” Brelyna complained, eyeing the journeyman’s emblem and apprentice’s seal clinking around J’zargo’s neck. “You’re not actually going to complete an apprenticeship, are you?”

“Of course not,” J’zargo agreed. “But now J’zargo’s talents are more evident to all.”

“Karrod did the same,” Onmund pointed out grumpily.

“And you did not,” J’zargo purred, and almost immediately found himself scuffling in the mud under the weight of an angry Nord. Claws were more than a match for hard Nordic fists, but they both had wounds to lick when Master Tolfdir levitated them apart.

Lectures never ceased during the year, though almost half the College’s students left in the spring to plant, farm, and harvest. They would return again when the weather cooled— or not, if they had married or made children in the meantime. So few were as dedicated to magical study as true mastery required.

Cold as Winterhold was, J’zargo could at least go without two layers of fur at all times in the summer. His hair rippled magnificently in the wind. Brelyna read in the sun on top of the Hall of Attainment. Karrod and Onmund went shirtless when they sparred in the courtyard, one with his flame-imbued steel swords and the other with an ever-shifting variety of bound blades.

J’zargo continued to be uncertain what precisely Karrod wanted from him, or vice versa. It was a mystery he wanted to solve alone, though. Things would only be awkward if he asked. For the time being, it was enough that they trained together, ate together, sometimes slept together— spoke and joked and touched easily.

One thing J’zargo knew for certain was that Karrod’s particular, unnamed attentions were for him alone. J’zargo had done enough surreptitious slinking around to know that after sparring, Karrod did not lie in the grass with his head on Onmund’s lap as they watched the clouds. When studying in the Arcaneum with Brelyna, he did not casually take her hand to massage away the pen cramps. He did not bring them dinner or comb their hair or otherwise breach the boundaries of ordinary friendship.

Urag could be trusted not to gossip about J’zargo’s interest in the courtship rituals of Redguard culture. The surly old Orc did not care enough about J’zargo’s personal life to share the knowledge around. Still, those few books did not help in the least— at least, not beyond telling J’zargo to sneak into Karrod’s lectures on the twentieth day of Rain’s Hand to take notes for him. When Karrod emerged from his isolation the next day and found J’zargo waiting at the morning meal with a stack of notes, he wrapped his arms around J’zargo in the middle of the dining hall and made some very suspicious noises into his hood. J’zargo fluffed his tail and tried not to look terribly smug at how clever he was.

“So… the two of you, then,” said Onmund in that day’s Destruction lecture. Like most of his observations, it was  _dull_. “That’s… I guess I can see it. Not sure what he sees in you, though.”

J’zargo gave him a disdainful glance. “J’zargo is not courting Karrod.”

“You never take notes for  _me_. Anyway, the way you lie around all over him— it’s obvious. You think you’re so clever, but you’re not actually that good at keeping it a secret.”

“J’zargo keeps secrets you will never dream of,” he growled, then dodged sideways and flung up a hasty ward to block Master Faralda’s incoming Lightning Bolt.

In Second Seed there came a new arrival to the College— odd for that time of year. Being consumed by a tricky new ward, J’zargo took little interest in the arrival until he  _saw_  her. Or rather, them.

She called herself Bosmer, and used a Bosmer name, and pleaded with the Master Wizard until Ervine allowed her to bring in her pet cat— but she was Khajiit and her small, four-footed sibling was as well. Though the men and mer of this College were blind, J’zargo knew Ohmes and Alfiq when he saw them.

He knew a secret when he saw one, too, and disguised his noise of shock upon seeing her as a cough. Before she spotted him, he had slunk away into the shadows.

His whiskers were quivering with joy and anticipation, but his gut roiled with hesitation. It was the feeling of being dragged between two things he wanted equally. And while normally J’zargo would declare that he would simply take  _both_  things, he knew that this time, he could not.

Time for answers, then, whether or not it made things awkward.

Karrod was hidden in a back corner of the Arcaneum, where Urag could not see him lying under a table with bread to nibble on. J’zargo rolled under the table, arranged himself by Karrod’s side, and ran a hand down Karrod’s chest.

“J’zargo has seen the new student,” he murmured, keeping his voice casual. “He has many thoughts.”

Karrod hooked their ankles together. “Oh?”

“J’zargo may be so much more talented than other mages, but it is so frustrating to be held back by distractions.”

Karrod followed his meaning despite the way J’zargo stepped nervously around the matter. “Is she distracting?”

“A little.”

“Khajiit?”

“Bosmer,” he lied. “Still, she seems to like cats.”

Karrod covered his laugh quickly, lest he alert Urag. It was  _good_  that he was laughing. “Are you going to use your charms on her, then?”

J’zargo tipped his chin to look up at Karrod, wide-eyed, as if he were surprised and wondering. The hesitation in his voice, though, was too real. “You… would not mind?”

Karrod winked. “No. Go for it.”

He did not know, sometimes, whether Karrod was clever enough to understand him. “You understand that J’zargo means to take her to bed.”

“Of course.” Karrod unhooked their ankles and nudged him. “Just don’t tell me about it when you come over tonight. I need my hair done.”

For a moment, all J’zargo could do was stare in astonishment. He reached over and buried his face against Karrod’s throat for a moment. Despite his noise of surprise, Karrod touched the back of his head in reassurance.

J’zargo  _could_  have both things.

He did not know, still, whether this was a courtship or not, but he knew that Karrod understood love-making like Khajiit, and for that Karrod was rare and special.

“This one will see you after evening meal,” J’zargo said breathlessly, and scrabbled out of the Arcaneum so fast that Urag shouted after him.

The noise of Cyldra unpacking her bags echoed around the Hall of Attainment, which was empty in the middle of the day. Her Alfiq companion chirped and complained throughout it, speaking not Ta’agra but the tone-and-tail language of four-legged Khajiit who could not make full words.

J’zargo brushed his cheek fur flat and ran his curling tail through his hands, doing his best to make his body language smooth, as though inwardly he were not all yowling joy and jangling nerves. Lithe as a panther, he lounged against the door frame and purred, “These sands are cold, but Khajiit feels warmness from your presence.”

Cyldra’s high-pointed ears shivered and flared. Alfiq leapt and spun as if the stone floor was hot iron. Her nose was so covered in dust from curious corner-searching that it was no wonder she hadn’t smelled J’zargo coming.

Cyldra turned to face him with pupils gone as wide as a skooma cat’s. From the white-limned glow of the room, J’zargo knew his were the same. Every fast breath tasted like  _family_.

She came to him on dreaming feet, her face wide with disbelieving wonder. J’zargo reached out and caught her cheeks in his hands, tracing his thumbs so carefully down the tearlines where most Ohmes painted on the shape of their muzzle. “You have not painted your face,  _roliter_. You look human.”

“ _Cyldra left her true face and name in a place where they are safe_ ,” she rasped, Ta’agra true on her tongue. J’zargo shivered involuntarily. “ _Brother. Cyldra did not expect to find other Khajiit here_!”

“ _J’zargo is the first_ ,” he growled. “ _J’zargo was the_ only.”

She was so tiny that it was a wonder even blind humans could mistake her for Bosmer. She barely rose to J’zargo’s breastbone. But when Cyldra reached up and grabbed J’zargo by the back of the neck, he surrendered to the pull and ducked low to press his face against her neck. She did the same to him. Then emotion took over and J’zargo swept her off her feet and tumbled her onto the bed so that they could touch all over.

The small sibling was not to be left out of this greeting, either. Alfiq walked all over J’zargo’s back with hard little paws as he rumbled and rubbed in Cyldra’s embrace. Yowling insistently, Alfiq jumped onto the bed and squeezed between the two bigger bodies. Freed of his rider, J’zargo let Cyldra push him up for just long enough to struggle out of his robes and throw them aside. Then Cyldra hauled him down again and arched her back to luxuriate in the full-body rub of his fur. J’zargo hid his face against her furless neck, seeking the strongest scent-place at the nape, and gasped until his head was full of Khajiit again for the first time in a long time.

Finally they came down to a satisfied stillness, the limbs of three bodies all tangled together. Alfiq had her paws on J’zargo’s face to hold him still as she groomed him. Cyldra’s fingers had found the three locs of hair twisted into the crest of J’zargo’s chest fur.

He touched the longest loc, rust-red and stiff from the years of waxing that had kept his home clan’s mane close to his heart. “ _This is Ri’dasi, Clan Mother of the Red Sands. This— this is Ri’saad, leader of Khajiit-who-seek-fortune, and this one is Ahkari, leader of Always-running-far-cats_.”

Cyldra showed his fingers the single white loc twined into Alfiq’s gold mane. “ _This is Dro’basa, Clan Mother of the Watered Paws. And she who bears it is Khavandi, the cousin of Cyldra. Cyldra carries Dro’basa also_.”

J’zargo stroked Khavandi appreciatively. Watered Paws had good land and much ill fortune in keeping it. Red Sands were too far south to feud with them. But it felt wrong to having nothing connecting him to these siblings except a  _lack_  of bad blood.

“ _J’zargo is thinking_ ,” he murmured, “ _there are so few Khajiit here that… perhaps it make sense to stay together when we find each other. As the first Khajiit of Winterhold, J’zargo offers you the mane of Clever-hand-mages_.”

Cyldra yelped laughter. “ _What business does M’zargo have leading Khajiit_?” she teased. “ _Cyldra should be leader here_.”

J’zargo rumbled a growl and bit her jaw gently, making the laughter break off into a gasp. “ _One day J’zargo will be Jo’zargo, and then you will be glad to say you are second in the footsteps of Skyrim’s Clever-hand-mages_.”

“ _Mm. Cyldra agrees_.” Her voice had dropped. She shifted her leg between his experimentally. “ _Do we celebrate the new band now_?”

Khavandi yowled complaint. With a chuckle, J’zargo extricated her from beneath his chin and nudged her out onto the blankets. “ _This one is deeply sorry, but he is not accompanied by any small siblings. Forgive J’zargo. He will make amends… perhaps with shiny gifts to welcome Khavandi into the band_?”

Khavandi bared her fangs but nonetheless turned tail and sauntered out of the room. Cyldra growled happily beneath J’zargo, drawing him back down with sharp little nails on his shoulders.

Taking full advantage of the empty Hall, they followed the wise direction of their loins. Cyldra’s tiny size posed some problems, but J’zargo was far more than ingenuitive enough to overcome these and make enthusiastic love regardless.

When they had finished, Cyldra rolled over and slyly pushed J’zargo off the bed with her foot. “ _It smells enough like you now_ ,” she smirked, stretching out across the full width of the bed. “ _Does J’zargo not have more lectures? The Master Wizard said they were all day long_.”

J’zargo got to his feet indignantly, trying not to let himself shake. He grabbed Cyldra’s ankle and hauled her down the mattress to press his teeth to her inner thigh again. She squeaked, proving that she was far less nonchalant than she seemed.

Satisfied, he straightened up. “ _J’zargo does not need to attend every lecture. He knows more than most of the teachers, anyway_.”

Nonetheless, he retrieved his robes and slipped back into them. It was wise not to overstay one’s welcome in a new lover’s bed, lest he lose that welcome altogether. Being in a band together did not mean that he and Cyldra would automatically always be lovers, only that they had chosen to form a shelter of family in foreign lands.

Just outside the door, J’zargo nearly ran straight into Brelyna. He hissed and leapt back. Her red eyes nearly glowed with fury, and she was clutching her book so hard that her knuckle were white. Apparently the Hall of Attainment had not been totally empty after all.

“How dare you,” she hissed. “The moment a new student shows up, you jump straight into bed with her?”

“Are you jealous?” J’zargo demanded, shaken by the sudden attack. “J’zargo does not see that his love-making is any of your business. Unless… ah, you want J’zargo’s attention as well.”

“I’m not jealous!” Brelyna shrilled. “How long have you been courting Karrod? How  _dare_  you?”

J’zargo burst out laughing. “Karrod does not care.”

Brelyna drew herself back, lip curling in disgust. “Trust me. He does. He  _loves_  you, you stupid cat.”

J’zargo did not dignify that with more than a mocking laugh as he strolled out of the Hall of Attainment. After all, Karrod had  _told_  him straight to his face that it was fine to take Cyldra to bed. For someone as familiar with body language as Khajiit, it had been easy to read complete honesty in Karrod’s relaxed body.

And yet.

And yet J’zargo was shaken.

He slipped soft-footed into the last lecture of the day without attracting Colette’s attention, but spent most of the hour luxuriating in the satisfaction of love-making and family. Ah, why worry? He would see Karrod at the evening meal, introduce him to Cyldra, and all would be resolved.

J’zargo was too late to break the news to Karrod, though.

Over the crush of students and teachers pushing  _slowly_  into the dining hall, J’zargo’s sharp ears heard Brelyna’s voice. “I’m so sorry,” she was saying.

She and Onmund had trapped Karrod near the entrance to the dining hall, their stupid faces soft with contrition and concern. Karrod looked deeply uncomfortable. They were too far away for J’zargo to step in.

“Brelyna, it’s not… it’s all right,” Karrod said. “I don’t care.”

“It’s not all right!”

“You don’t have to say that,” Onmund assured him. “It’s not your fault that he cheated. I wish I had warned you, but I assumed you knew—”

“ _Onmund_.”

“He didn’t  _cheat_ ,” Karrod said loudly. “Listen to me, I don’t care if… I don’t want to talk about this, all right? I just— J’zargo!”

J’zargo pushed out of the crowd and took Karrod’s wrist. With no urging at all, Karrod hurried with him into the dining hall. They pressed into line where Onmund and Brelyna could not get at them. Karrod’s hand twisted around so that he could twine his fingers with J’zargo’s.

“Have fun?” Karrod asked tightly.

J’zargo did not like his tone of voice. Had he been mistaken after all? “Yes,” he said cautiously, and leaned in close to press their arms together. “J’zargo… J’zargo hopes he has not… misunderstood your words.”

Karrod let out a shuddering sigh. “No,” he said firmly. “It doesn’t bother me at all. I’m  _happy_  for you. I just don’t want to talk about it, okay? Not with you or them.”

J’zargo traced his thumbclaw over the back of Karrod’s hand. “You are certain that you are happy?”

Karrod looked over and finally gave a full, real grin. Uncaring that they were in line for food, he butted J’zargo forehead to forehead, as Khajiit did. “I’m happy.”

 

* * *

 

 

**1\. Un-Love**

 

But others were not happy.

Brelyna did not speak to J’zargo any longer. Instead, she made a habit of following Karrod about between lectures as if waiting for him to fall on her shoulder weeping. Onmund  _did_  speak to J’zargo, but now he had turned into an angry, protective bear who called J’zargo a “stupid, untrustworthy cat!” over little things like accidentally hitting him with Frostbite while training. Even Enthir and Arniel gave J’zargo doubtful looks when they thought he was not paying attention. Karrod’s tendency to make fast friends with  _everyone_  was turning out to be a nightmare.

Worse was that people kept prodding Karrod about it. How many times did a man have to insist that he didn’t want to  _talk_  about something before everyone would listen? And J’zargo was not always there to be cruel when Karrod was too kind to push people away. It came to the point where Karrod started to look hunted even when J’zargo came to sit with him in the library.

Worst, though… worst was the way Brelyna and Onmund treated Cyldra. Even though Cyldra had been introduced to Karrod— had smelled J’zargo’s scent all over Karrod’s room, had helped J’zargo twist Karrod’s hair that evening and added her own scent to the mix— she did not know how to handle the accusations of promiscuity from Brelyna or the scowling and shouldering from Onmund.

Much as J’zargo wanted to sink his claws in, he knew there were cleverer ways of solving the problem. When Brelyna had cornered Cyldra in her room to harangue her once more about her continued love-making with J’zargo, he simply cast Amplify over the staircase that led up to the second floor of the Hall of Attainment. In a matter of moments, Master Wizard Ervine stalked out of her room with a scowl.

“What right do you have to bully a new apprentice like this?” Ervine demanded, when she had hauled a shame-faced Brelyna up to the second floor. “The standards of the College of Winterhold are higher than this, Apprentice Maryon. Our community already faces enough threats from the outside. Sort it out with grace or face discipline.”

This did not stop Brelyna and Onmund from coming after J’zargo in snipes and scowls, whispers and scoffs. Clever as he was, he  _did_  begin finding classes difficult when deprived of every scrap of help from others. And it wore on him like Alfiq on the back of Senche-raht, the constant spine-prickling of aggression that stripped J’zargo’s energy and tolerance bit by bit.

“Just tell J’zargo what to tell them,” he urged Karrod in the Arcaneum, on one of the few moments of privacy he had managed to snatch. “You do not have to speak at all.”

Karrod was rubbing his forehead, hiding his face. “I can’t.”

“Just tell J’zargo what this  _is_!”

“I don’t know!” Karrod shouted, jolting to his feet. Red-faced and wild-eyed, he was already shoving books and parchment into his bag before Urag yelled, “Be quiet or get out!”

And then Karrod was gone.

J’zargo had become accustomed enough to Karrod’s avoidance that he didn’t notice the absence at waking bell, at morning meal, or at first lecture. But Karrod was not in their mandatory research lecture, or in the halls. Or at evening meal.

“Where is he?” J’zargo said dumbly, staring at the empty room.

“He left last night,” said Onmund in a low, hard voice from behind him.

Ignoring him, J’zargo stepped into the room, numb with shock. His claws trailed over the wardrobe doors, feeling them thump emptily. Everything accumulated in Karrod’s ten months at the College was gone. Even the bed had been stripped of its linens, leaving only furs over the hay-stuffed mattress.

Delicately, J’zargo removed a slip of folded parchment from between the headboard and the mattress. It had his name on it.

 

_Call this one a coward. It is true. I am too afraid to say these things to a dear face that may be offended._

_You asked me what this is between us— but J’zargo, I do not know. I do not know how to say it in Imperial or in Yoku or in Halftongue. It is difficult to explain._

_You are not my lover or my beloved. Never in my life have I felt what I could call romantic love, and I do not feel it now, and I think I never will. Never have I wanted to make love to anyone, and nor do I now. I have tried but always failed. It does not feel right to seek these things._

_And yet I love you in a way that is not friendship. What else can I call these strong feelings but love? Un-love, perhaps._

_Believe me, I feel for you. I want you near to me. I want your company. I want to hold you and stay with you and be yours. It does not bother me if you desire romance and love-making with others, because this is not what I want from you, as long as I will still be yours._

_I am sorry if what I ask from you is impossible. I have never met anyone else who did not want romance and love from their companion. Maybe I have misled you into thinking we might wed. I am sorry._

_Please, J’zargo— do not write to me if you are only waiting for me to change my mind. Do not write if you think I will one day want to kiss you and make love. If you do not write, I will take this for all the answer I need._

_But if you want the un-love I have for you, write to me and tell me yes_.

 

“Good work,” said Onmund from the door, red-faced with anger. “He was my friend. He was one of the only real  _friends_  I’ve ever had, and now you’ve gone and—”

“This is not my fault!” J’zargo roared. “This is your fault! You did not leave him alone about it when he said, ‘Do not ask me, I do not want to talk about it!’ You did this until he fled!”

Even brave Nord Onmund shrank back from J’zargo’s bared fangs. J’zargo bolted up the stairs fast enough that he nearly skidded into Master Wizard Ervine at the top.

“Where is he?” J’zargo demanded, panting. “Where did he go?”

Ervine sighed and looked put-upon. “J’zargo, unlike you, Adept Karrod takes his Restoration studies seriously. He began arranging to do his Restoration apprenticeship two weeks ago.”

“ _Where_?”

“Whiterun. He said to address any letters for him to the Temple of Kynareth.”

Karrod had said  _write to me_. But the heart said that Karrod needed to hear these words directly from a dear face.

It was stupid. J’zargo knew that it was stupid even as he shoved money and clothing into a gathersack, ignoring Onmund’s demands— even as he ran past Faralda at the gate without answering her questions and stamped out into the snow of Winterhold— even as he discovered that there was no carriage driver available and he would have to walk all the way to the next major town, perhaps even all the way out of Winterhold to the Nightgate Inn.

So few were as dedicated to magical study as true mastery required. But just because J’zargo was running off from the College in the middle of the night, destined to miss lectures for at  _least_  two weeks, did not mean he was not dedicated. That he would not eventually be acknowledged as a Master, or even the Arch Mage. All it meant was that his dearest companion needed to stop being a fool and not distract J’zargo from study with his fright and his guilt and his anguish.

Twin Moons, what terrible fear it had to be to make unflinching Karrod run from possible rejection. What anguish.

J’zargo had followed the Queen’s pointing hand south for eight days when he finally came to the city of Whiterun at dusk. The road had worn him down, left him hungry, footsore, and cold. And determined.

He didn’t bother attempting to enter the city by the gate. All that would do was alert the guard that a Khajiit was seeking entrance. Instead, J’zargo slunk around the base of the crumbling walls until he found a place where the stones were loose and the mortar made soft by years of water pouring from a gutter overhead. He waited until Jode and Jone had come out in the sky, until the guard’s footsteps had passed, and then drank an invisibility potion. He was already attacking the creviced stone with clever paws before the ice-water chill of invisibility had finished spreading across his skin.

 _Khajiit are fastest and cleverest of all people_ , J’zargo reminded himself as he scrambled over the walltop and immediately flung himself off the parapet, onto the roof of the nearest house. With a deafening clatter, he slid down into some bushes and lay there, panting in pain, while the guards shouted in confusion above.  _And make the most beautiful rugs if the Nords catch them sneaking_.

He was not caught. After some time, J’zargo crawled slowly through the shadows and around the house. Concealed from the walltop, he stood up and adjusted his robes so that everything Khajiit was hidden: tail, paws, ears and face.

Voice, though. Voice he could not conceal. Better just not to be caught—

“What are you doing?” demanded a woman’s voice.

J’zargo froze, crouched beside an open window in the Temple of Kynareth. He could run, or— no. Best to be charming. Priestesses were supposed to be merciful, no?

“Please,” J’zargo whispered, rising to his feet and reaching out to catch the woman’s hand in his. She gasped at seeing his face and hands up close. “J’zargo is not a bad person. He only seeks his— friend. Karrod. Karrod is an apprentice here, no?”

“He is,” said the priestess cautiously. “Listen, I don’t know how you got in here—” A generous statement, given that the window was wide open— “—but I’m sure you’re not supposed to be. I think you should leave.”

“Please,” J’zargo said again, letting real desperation sound in his voice. He could not return to the College if he were stuck in jail. Worse, he could not even write to Karrod. “This is a matter of love.”

She hesitated, and then… softened. “I suppose I can just let Karrod handle you, whoever you are. Come with me. And keep quiet.”

To J’zargo’s surprise, she lead him out of the temple and into the darkened streets. “Thane Karrod doesn’t sleep at the temple with the rest of us,” the priestess explained in an undertone, keeping her lantern well clear of J’zargo so that it wouldn’t make his eyes reflect green at the few passers-by. “Just as well that he’s got a house of his own. We’re packed to the rafters with injured folk.”

 _Thane_? There was a piece of the mystery that J’zargo had never imagined.

The house she led him to was small and snug, with candlelight glowing yellow through the rippled glass windows. The priestess rapped on the door and waited, keeping a careful eye on J’zargo.

When it opened, J’zargo’s ears rose and fell just as quickly when he found himself confronted not with Karrod, but with a flat-faced Nord woman in armour who looked like she could snap him in half.

“Danica, who is this?” she demanded.

“He says he’s looking for Thane Karrod.”

The armoured woman began to draw her sword. “How did he even get into the city?”

“ _Karrod_!” J’zargo hollered, knowing a devolving situation when he saw one.

Something cracked on the floorboards upstairs. Moments later, thunderous footsteps came across the floor, down the staircase— and then there was Karrod, panting, astonishment and hope and fear writ large across his face in turn.

“Lydia,  _don’t_ ,” was the first thing he said when he saw her hand on her weapon. And then his hands fell limp at his sides and he could only stare. “I... J’zargo?”

Without thinking, cursing all the while in Ta’agra, J’zargo shoved past the armoured Nord and kept walking until he had slammed into Karrod and wrapped his arms around him.

“Fool,” J’zargo growled in his ear. His voice was cracking embarrassingly.  Nearby, the Nord woman closed the door of the house, but J’zargo paid it little attention. “You ran away. It was such a long way for J’zargo to follow.”

Slowly, tentatively, Karrod placed his hands against J’zargo’s back. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t know what to do.”

And J’zargo, who had read the letter a hundred times or more, knew what to say. “Be near me,” he rasped. “Be my company. Hold me and stay with me and be mine.”

A hard breath shuddered through Karrod. “You want that?”

J’zargo drew back to look Karrod in the face, needing to see his so-black eyes when he said this. “ _You_  want this?” he demanded, his hands still on Karrod’s sides. “What we had in Winterhold— you want that? Just that, and nothing more, never? This is what would satisfy you?”

And still Karrod swallowed and his jaw trembled before he could answer, “Yes.”

“ _Yes_ ,” J’zargo echoed, dragging the hiss out in his urgency. “Yes, J’zargo wants this. Yes, please. Khajiit knows no word for this un-love either, but he wants it. He will teach this to every fool at the College until they understand. He will make this work.”

When Karrod pulled him close again, it was just as well. J’zargo had urgent need to hide his face against Karrod’s throat.

“You came all the way to tell me that?” Karrod joked weakly.

J’zargo shuddered and scraped his claws gently down the back of Karrod’s leather vest. “Imagine if J’zargo had sent a letter and it was lost, hm? What then? Terrible things.”

“We’ll have to hide you,” Karrod murmured, as if to himself. His hand ran up and down J’zargo’s back. “At least until you go back. You are going back, right?”

“Soon,” J’zargo mumbled.

“I can make arrangements, my Thane,” said the woman behind J’zargo. All right, he liked this big armoured Nord. “Leave it to me.”

Karrod sighed, long and relieved. “Bless you, Lydia. I... gods.”

J’zargo could tell when enough was enough for one night. He felt none too energetic himself. “Come,” he said, slipping out of Karrod’s arms and taking him by the hand. “Show J’zargo where is bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> "A  **queerplatonic**  (or  **quasiplatonic** ) relationship is a relationship that is not romantic but involves a close emotional connection (platonic) beyond what most people consider friendship. The commitment level in a queerplatonic relationship is often considered to be similar to that of a romantic relationship."  
> — [AVEN wiki](http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Queerplatonic)
> 
> "As I’ve ranted about ad nauseum before, there’s a tendency to value romantic and sexual relationships over other types of relationships, where friendship and queerplatonic connections are considered the training wheels for the real relationship, and where it’s assumed that nonsexual partners always take a back seat to other kinds of relationships. And don’t enjoy a connection with the same emotional depth as a sexual relationship. We are, after all, just the second fiddles, the entertainment while the primary partner is away.
> 
> The devaluation of these kinds of connections means that many people are also deeply confused by them, especially when they encounter queerplatonic partners in person. And I do say partner, and sometimes refer to the unit formed by a partner and myself as a couple, because we are. We function like a couple, we do things together, we are intimate with each other, though not necessarily in the way people expect. We are a couple."  
> — ["I Don't Mean To Baffle You, But I Do: Queerplatonic Partnerships"](http://meloukhia.net/2012/06/i_dont_mean_to_baffle_you_but_i_do_queerplatonic_partnerships/)
> 
> "if you don’t respect platonic love as equal to romantic love a million turtles will break into your house tonight and steal all your electronics"  
> — [queerplatonic-cuties](http://queerplatonic-cuties.tumblr.com/post/99241892652/if-you-dont-respect-platonic-love-as-equal-to)


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